Nozomi Raises $15 Million

Wednesday, January 10, 2018 @ 11:01 AM gHale

By Gregory Hale
There is no denying cybersecurity in the manufacturing automation sector is growing and more users are not only kicking the tires, but are starting down the path to a more secure plant environment.

But to get the word out to users who need to understand who to listen to and what to purchase, more security companies are reaching out to investors to gain more capital to advance their technology and spread the word.

Nozomi Networks Inc. is the latest company to receive funding as it just raised $15 million in Series B financing. The Invenergy Future Fund led the round with participation from THI Investments and all existing investors, GGV Capital, Lux Capital and Planven Investments SA. This latest round brings Nozomi Networks’ total funding to $23.8 million.

Nozomi focuses on operational visibility for industrial control systems (ICS).

“Nozomi Networks’ superior technology and team have made them the market leader in securing energy and other critical infrastructure industries from escalating cyber threats,” said Michael Polsky, founder and chief executive of Invenergy and chair of the Invenergy Future Fund investment committee.

In a crowded network visibility market, Nozomi gained new customers across five continents over the last year. Over 200 Nozomi deployments span energy, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, mining, and utilities.

SCADAguardian automatically discovers the industrial network including its components, connections and topology. It develops security and process profiles and monitors the system in real-time for any changes. It also provides:
• Comprehensive, hybrid ICS threat detection that combines behavior-based, rules, signatures and artificial intelligence analysis
• Incident capture and forensic tools
• Easy integration and sharing of ICS and cybersecurity information with IT/OT environments
• Enterprise-class scalability when deployed with the related Central Management Console

“Now is a prudent time for funding to meet this exploding market opportunity,” said Nozomi Networks Chief Executive Edgard Capdevielle. “The Invenergy Future Fund is the ideal partner to complement the strengths of our existing investors and board. With additional resources, Nozomi Networks will convert our early market lead into a major force, securing critical infrastructure around the globe.”

Nozomi said it will use the funding to fuel worldwide expansion of marketing, sales and support and further bolster product innovation at a time when the ICS cybersecurity market shows clear signs of growth.

Market and Markets research predicts the ICS cybersecurity market will grow to $13.88 Billion by 2022. Forty-six percent of respondents in the annual SANS ICS survey indicated security budgets are growing and more than half of the companies surveyed in the 2017 State of Industrial Cybersecurity report say they’ve experienced an ICS security incident in the past 12 months.

“FireEye’s recent discovery of Triton malware in the wild highlights how critical infrastructure facilities are increasingly at risk,” said Grady Summers, CTO at security provider FireEye. “After extensive testing, we’ve partnered with Nozomi Networks because they provide the right solution customers need to detect these attacks at the earliest stages and minimize the impact before the safety and reliability of their critical operations is threatened.”